


so no one told you life was gonna be this way

by druidforhire



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Romantic Fluff, Sharing a Bed, hermes only appears for like 0.5 seconds sorry, will add character tags as chapters are actually added and they appear, yo why is the orphydice tag so weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2020-04-09 17:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19066471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/druidforhire/pseuds/druidforhire
Summary: AU. Orpheus and Eurydice are apartment neighbors; she moved in first, then him, the floor above her, and she gets into the habit of listening to him play through the ceiling. Their schedules don't line up well enough to cross paths--she doesn't actually see or talk to him until five months later.Hermes runs the bar across the street and the Fates are street vendors in the same spot; watching Orpheus and Eurydice out on their balconies becomes their entertainment. Hades owns the building with his wife, Persephone.A collection of one-shots.





	1. every time we touch

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this "apartments au" first on Tumblr; this is more or less so I have a collection of the one-shots I write for this AU in one place, and on a platform where writing is better appreciated lol. 
> 
> There's a summary post that'll serve as a good basis going in, since I'm probably not gonna write any setup whatsoever.
> 
> https://druid-for-hire.tumblr.com/post/184931083815/druid-for-hire-hadestown-apartments-au-a-very
> 
> Have fun! And thank you for reading!
> 
> (Note: the chapters are not necessarily in order. Generally, everything happens in the same year or two.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eurydice and Orpheus meet for the first time.

A wind blows through and Eurydice has to spit the hair out of her mouth.

Above her, the papers rustle and get swatted down again. There’s a commotion of banging around as the guy on the balcony above her scrambles over his furniture to keep all his music from flying away; Eurydice sees his hand reach out for one last sheet, but the wind whisks it away from his grasp with a pained cry. The sound twists in her chest.

The wind changes again. Eurydice snatches the music out of the air before it can hit her in the face.

She’s… never seen his music before, actually, or  _any_ sheet music that wasn’t officially printed. She’s only ever listened to him play and practice and rewrite and mumble to himself. She’s _heard_ his process, but what does it _look_  like?

Eurydice unfolds it gently. There’s no crinkle, she notices–it’s gone soft from being folded or crumpled so many times, probably from vigorous erasing and being hastily shoved into bags, judging by the old smudges of graphite and the tears on its curling edges. The notes themselves are extremely wibbly and sparse. It was written only for him to be able to make sense of.

She thinks that’s kind of cool, actually. Eurydice boasts no musical inclinations whatsoever, but she finds herself peering at the notes anyway, trying to find the melody out of the mess he’s scratched onto the page. 

She’d gotten so invested in it that the sob above her jerks her violently back into the present. Oh crap, she thinks. Right: it’s finals week. Guy above her is stressed, lost his sheet music, and is probably going to have a breakdown if she doesn’t say anything. She should  _say something_. Uhh, d–hell, what is she supposed to say–wait, why is this a hard question?

She leans as far as she can over the railing and calls above her, “HEY! Hey! Is this yours?”

The guy above her startles. She can hear him scrubbing at his face, and then he rushes to the railing so fast he almost goes careening over it.

His eyes are still teary and wet and his face is kind of a mess, but oh fuck, Eurydice would still call him cute.  _Really_  cute. This is the guy who plays that guitar like a gentle magic and sings so sweetly. This is the guy whose late-night practice has lulled her to sleep. This is the guy who Eurydice, in spite of herself, can already feel herself falling very, very hard for. If she’d just spotted him from across a bar she probably wouldn’t have given him a second thought. But after months of eavesdropping on him and his music and his kindness, open on display from phone calls and his visiting friends, the moment she finally sees him over the railing is the moment she decides,  _fuck. I’m in love with this boy_.

He blanches when he sees her. “Oh my god. Uh. Y–yeah, that’s mine, uh, holy–hold on, I’ll come downstairs, please don’t fall over oh my god.”

Then he’s gone again.

She hears his steps rush to the door through the ceiling above her, and she honestly hopes he doesn’t trip and hurt himself or something. That’d be… pretty unfortunate, given the day he’s had. That she thinks he’s had, anyway. Well. He was already on the verge of crying on the balcony, so she’s pretty sure it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to say that it hasn’t been a good day. Week, even.

She pulls open the door the second he knocks. Maybe that was too eager.

He’s really cute up close. He’s like a rabbit. All cute and nervous and a little twitchy, but she doesn’t mind. It’s charming.

Ah. She’s staring.

“… I have your music,” she mumbles, and passes him the sheet.

“… Thanks.” He’s staring too. She can’t tell if the redness in his face is from crying or blushing. He doesn’t look down to take the paper, and he misses–he accidentally grabs the back of her hand instead and both of them recoil. The blood starts to rush to Eurydice’s ears. (His hand is pretty. Sharp around the edges, strong-looking and a little veiny; they must see a lot of use. She’d never seen a hand actually look pretty before, and she’s including the callouses.)

She regains her composure, smooths out her feathers. “Here.” She holds the sheet up higher, and he takes it this time.

“Thanks,” he repeats. “Um, I gotta go study, but do you wanna talk again?”

“Yes.” She sees his eyes light up.

“Okay. Maybe not on the balcony. It’s kind of scary when you lean out like that.”

“I’m not sure we can do anything about that. I only ever run across you when we’re both on the balcony, ‘cause we never get to run into each other when we’re leaving or coming back into the building.”

“But can you lean back? For me?”

“Pfft. Fine.” That’s a lie. Eurydice wants to see his face, and if that means leaning precariously over the railing, then so be it.

God, this guy looks so happy right now. If this is what she does to him, then maybe she’s got a chance. There’s laughter underlining his voice when he says, “Okay. Thank you so much for getting this for me.”

She shrugs. “It’s nothin’. Blew into my face anyway. Hey–I didn’t catch your name?”

“Orpheus.”

“Eurydice. Go do your homework, Orpheus. See you around.”

“Okay, Eurydice, you too.” He waves back at her as he walks back to the elevator, and Eurydice tries to ignore the way hearing her name on his lips makes her feel.

When he turns the corner and leaves her sight, she shuts the door and immediately falls back against it, sliding to the floor with her face in her hands. 

Oh god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada.


	2. so what's wrong with taking the back streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hades meets Orpheus for the first time.

The first time Hades sees Orpheus is not when he gets his keys, it’s when the kid is leaving the building at two in the fucking AM.

Here’s the thing: Orpheus put in the request online, and Hades didn’t give Orpheus the keys to his apartment, the guy at the desk did. Hades might meticulously keep track of every number and name going in and out of the building, but it doesn’t mean he has a face for all of them, which makes spotting this tall, raggedy, beanpole of a teenager with a guitar on his back in his lobby all the more… weird. He’s so run-down that Hades doesn’t realize he’s not one of the homeless at first.

(And look,  _he_  has an excuse to be up this late. He has  _work_.)

“Excuse me,” he says, his low voice rumbling like a furnace in the desolate silence. The kid (who looks to be about college age, now that he sees him clearly) spooks and turns to look at him. He looks like a kid who got caught stealing candy.

Hades approaches calmly, but his powerful figure isn’t making him look very affable. He sees it in the kid’s widening eyes. “Are you supposed to be here, young man?”

The young man blinks. “… well. The lobby’s not closed, right?”

“No. Are you renting here?”

“Yes…?” The kid pauses, then suddenly reaches for the keys in his pocket, fumbling before he holds them up for Hades to see. “I got here back in December. I’m Orpheus.”

Hades’ train of thought hits a wall.

What?

“December? Is that so?” His touch is gentle when he reaches down to take the keys so he can get a look at them, but the kid is still scared straight. He knows he’s intimidating, but really, what’s Orpheus got to fear? He should already know he’s not in trouble. He lives here. Hades is just curious about… well, everything about this.  _This_  is the kid that his wife seems so fixated with, hm?

He passes the keys back down to him after checking if they’re legitimate, dropping them carefully into his palm. “Has it been that long? I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Oh. Uh… probably ‘cause I–-I leave and come back at some really weird times. Like-–”

“Like now?”

Orpheus’ jaw clicks shut. Hades shakes his head and pats his shoulder. (It’s tense.) “Relax, boy. I’m just wonderin’ why I hadn’t seen you ‘till now. Do you always leave at two in the morning?”

“No. I was just…”

Orpheus pauses for a very long time.

“… I was just, um, uh, gonna get… food. From one of those–-you know, that’s open 24/7.”

He’s a terrible lie, but Hades isn’t about to bust his chops. From how twitchy and nervous he is already, he really doubts that Orpheus is capable of doing anything that’s actually illegal, so that’s as far as he’s gonna push it.

“Then I won’t keep ya. Go on and get your food, son.” 

“Okay, Mr. Hades–-uh, thank you!” Orpheus hurries to the doors. 

 

Orpheus crosses the street with a haste and belatedly remembers to look both ways. "God, that was weird," he mutters to himself. The landlord is so damn intimidating. He feels lucky to have gotten by without trouble.

Well. Whatever–-he hasn’t really got the time to wonder too hard about that right now, he thinks, as he heads down to the college to break into one of the practice rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "All Star" by Smash Mouth.


	3. anyway, here’s wonderwall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orpheus and Eurydice have their first real conversation that doesn’t involve the immediate threat of grave injury.

There’s a flyer on the floor when Eurydice comes home to her apartment. God, this shit again, she thinks, and nearly kicks it aside until she spots the familiar font plastered across the top. That’s… strange. She’s never gotten a flyer from Hermes’ bar before.

… Apparently they’re having some sort of student event all night for a few nights next week. Open mic for all the music students. Orpheus works there, doesn’t he? Is this an invitation?

Either way—the college this is for is the same as Orpheus’. She’s pretty fucking sure this is an invitation.

And if it’s not, she’ll drag him into it.

 

* * *

 

“You invited her?” 

“Yes.” 

Orpheus is a little giddy and Hermes can tell. He shakes his head, bemused, as he wipes down the counter. Orpheus is practically vibrating; the only reason he’s sitting still is that he’s too focused on tuning his guitar.

Hermes sets down his rag. “You know, she’s going to want to hear you sing.”

“I know. I’m not worried about that. She’s heard me sing lots of times.”

“Muffled through the ceiling, sure. Or outside without any real acoustics somewhere above her head. Have you thought about what song you’ll sing?”

A delay while Orpheus processes, concentrated on the tuning pegs. “No?”

“Well, you better pick something good.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

 

* * *

 

Orpheus is worrying.

Eurydice’s coming. She’d told him as much over the balcony, and then proceeded to pester him for an hour about why he owned a mountain dulcimer. And he has figured out what song he’s gonna get up to sing, and he wants to really impress Eurydice with the proper equipment (and a loop pedal!), but he’s just… anxious. What if she doesn’t like it?

Oh god, what if she doesn’t like it? She’ll spurn him. Her image of him will lower and she’ll start seeing him as annoying and she’ll get irritated and stop talking to him, and then she’ll move and he’ll never see her again and then he’ll fail all his classes and die. 

“I’m going to die,” he says.

“No, you’re not,” Hermes replies. 

“She’s gonna hate me.”

“No, she’s not.”

No, she’s not. Orpheus knows logically that none of that would happen—she wouldn’t drop his sorry behind just because he flubbeda performance (probably), they’ve been talking for weeks now and she at least loves his music as filtered through her ceiling. And she’s so funny, and sweet and kind and badass and capable and nice and beautiful and he thinks he’d die if she rejected him from her life outright.

God, he’s gonna die. Orpheus grumbles and puts his face in his hands. 

Eurydice walks through the door.

 

* * *

 

Orpheus mulls over how well the evening’s gone so far as he watches the next students play their set. 

Eurydice’d walked in, he’d fumbled around and said hi, sat her down, got her drinks, asked if she wanted any food, he’ll go get it you chill back okay? He wanted to be hospitable. She’d just smiled and laughed and told him to go get them a salad and fries to munch on.

Bit of a weird combo, but he wasn’t gonna go complaining about getting green in his diet. (He will complain later about how he’s gonna have less money than usual, but there’s nothing he wouldn’t spend for her.) 

Then they… talked. Like they usually do over the balcony, but this time with more ease and less straining and much less constant risk of teetering over a railing and falling to their deaths. It’s the first real conversation they’ve had that didn’t involve an immediate risk of dying.

“Come home with me?” he asks suddenly.

Eurydice blinks. “What?”

“After this.” He nods towards the kids on set. “Come home with me? We can keep this going and hang out properly for once. You live right downstairs, so it won’t be hard to go home. I promise my apartment’s not a mess.” 

Eurydice stares at him for a long moment (Oh god I blew it, Orpheus thinks), before she snorts and starts laughing, stifling herself to keep from disturbing the performers too much. Past his faint embarrassment, he can’t help but be mesmerized. The way her face lit up—the sound of her laugh. It’s…

“Tell you what.” She waves her fork at him. “You’re a composition major, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How about, scratch whatever folk song you were gonna do. I want you—“ she points her fork at him, “to get up there—“ she points to the stage, “and sing me your best. Then I’ll think about it.”

Orpheus freezes. “But it isn’t finished.”

Eurydice smirks, raising her drink to her lips. “You wanna take me home?”

“Yes.” 

She looks at him over the lip of the glass. “Sing the song,” she beckons, and takes a sip just as the kids finish their set.

Oh, god.

He’s so glad there isn’t a written setlist.

Stiffly, he stands up. His guitar bumps against his side as he gets up onstage, a hello, a greeting. The spotlights are on him. Their eyes are on him. Even the hushed murmur has quieted—Orpheus is almost sick. They’re expectant, all of them; everybody wants to hear the so-called prodigy strum his lyre, but his keel got knocked over last minute and he’s not so sure anymore.

He catches Eurydice’s eye.

Okay.

He tunes his guitar and starts to play.

 

* * *

 

The music is lovely. The lyrics are just a story about a king, but the poetry is beautiful, and the way he sings is captivating. She’s enraptured. Every lilt, every phrase, all his diction and punctuation. Soft, but not watery, and loud, but not punchy; it’s clear and high and ethereal, almost floating. The guitar he accompanies himself with is no less enthralling. It’s a singer too. 

And then—

A swell of sound, and then he’s singing nothing but  _la, la la la, la la la,_ harmonized with himself threefold on the loop pedal ,  and—Eurydice’s not sure how because the bar doesn’t even have any proper acoustics. But she _swears_ his  voice and guitar notes are falling down from every point in the ceiling. The sound rolls off of the walls and glides across the tabletops, rivers of gold in the air, and the whole bar is stunned into silence as Orpheus sings them what she can’t help but call an epic.

La, la la la, la la.

Holy shit.

Orpheus trails off. He stiffens when he realizes that every single one of the patrons is staring at him in raptured silence. The apologies start coming: “It’s a work in progress,” he stammers, “it isn't finished yet…”

Work in progress.  _Holy shit_.

A drunk man starts whooping before Orpheus can stew in the silence for too long, and the bar roars with applause. He flushes deeply, surprised and flattered, says “thank you for listening” into the mic and steps offstage.

Hermes comes over and slaps him on the back before he sits down. “Nice job, son.”

Orpheus, twig that he is, tries (and fails) to pretend that he didn’t just get the wind knocked out of him. “Thanks,” he wheezes.

 

* * *

 

That night, Orpheus takes her home, both of them a little tipsy and a hundred percent giddy. He shows her the hundreds of plants that litter his apartment (“Persephone gives them all to me, I can’t say no”) and the weird instruments that he keeps (“Orpheus, what the fuck is a crumhorn?”). He shows her his songs. He plays them all for her, from worn sheet music that’s crowded with pencilled annotations, filled with notes and warnings to himself, odd lines and marks that only he really gets. She listens to him talk about them all, about the meaning of every chord progression and suspension—and the forty-eight minute concerto he wrote for his final. She tells him stories about the hundreds of eccentric coworkers she’s worked with over her life. She’d gone to work right out of high school. All she’d ever known was how to hold her own, she tells him, and his face softens as he takes her hand and tells her that she doesn’t have to, that he’ll help any way he can. She nods and says “Alright,” then launches into how much it sucks to work in retail. He laughs loud; she laughs louder. 

They talk long, long into the night, and even though she lives right in the apartment below him, it doesn’t quite feel like home when she has to leave. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only edited/proofread this a little. Please be gentle.


	4. i am safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orpheus and Eurydice share a Hanukkah together.

When he rings her, it’s a snowy December dusk, which means it’s only three in the afternoon. The sun is beginning to set; it paints the whole horizon in fiery reds, a stark contrast with the bitingly cold temperatures and bluey unplowed snow on the streets. The road below the apartment is blessedly quiet for once. There's too much snow for cars to pass, and it absorbs sound anyway. It is a _wonderful_ day to stay indoors.

She picks up the landline. “Hello?”

His voice comes crackling through: “Hi, Eurydice! This is Orpheus. Uh, I’m—sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, I kept forgetting until now. I hope you’re free. It’s Hanukkah, and I was going to ask if you’d like to come over and light the menorah with me?”

Hanukkah? Is it? She barely keeps track of the holidays. “I’m free, but you have to gimmie a half hour to get ready. I haven’t even brushed my hair today.”

“Oh, of course! I didn’t mean right away. Take all the time you need, Eurydice.”

“I’ll be up in a little while. See you soon. Love you.”

“Okay! You too!”

Eurydice hangs up. She sighs.

She really isn’t the kind of girl to get all fucking sappy and sentimental and longing, but she can’t help the part of her that wonders when she’ll be able to say “I love you” to a partner instead of a friend.

Ugh. That's gross.

 

* * *

 

Thirty minutes later she’s knocking on his apartment door. 

He opens it and she sees his whole face light up as he takes her in. She hadn’t done much but clean up—brush her hair, put in her contacts, put on some pants, brush her teeth—yet he still looks positively awed by her, and she puffs up with the ego boost. “Hi,” he says. “Come on in.”

He looks pretty nice too, she has to admit. His hair is fluffy and parted nearly. There's one of those little hats for Jewish folk sat on his head. He has a Star of David necklace hanging over his usual bandanna. Generally, Orpheus has the wardrobe of a broke-ass college student (because that’s what he is), but he’s pretty dressy tonight.

“Hey.” She moves in as Orpheus steps aside, taking in the apartment in all its plant-infested glory. All his lights are off except for a bright lamp that stands against the wall. “Hanukkah, right? What’s, uh—what’s that about?”

He shuts the door behind her. “The story or the holiday?”

“I know the story. I mean the stuff with the holiday. Like, what do we _do?”_

“Oh, well—we light the menorah at sundown.” He points to the window, where the sky is rapidly dimming. “There’s a candle lit for each night plus the one in the center, the shammash. That one lights the other candles.” 

She watches him bustle over and take a seat next to his table where he’s got some stuff set up. There’s his menorah and a bunch of candles in a box nearby, a lighter, and couple of random shit like coasters and a box of what she assumes is pastries. She follows him to the table and takes a couple of the candles in hand.

He holds out the butt of one to her. “Eat this.”

"No," she says, and bats it out of his hand. Eurydice starts to fill in all of the slots before he stops her again, saying, “It’s only one tonight besides the shammash.”

She can tell he’s trying desperately to avoid the “you’re doing it wrong” thing. She can also tell she’s doing it wrong. She takes out the extra candles, leaving one on the far left side. Orpheus makes a sound, raising a hand, and she switches it to the far right before he can get any farther.

He looks embarrassed, like he didn’t think she’d be _this_ lost and that he’s afraid that she’ll start getting mad. In an attempt to placate him, she says, “Don’t worry. I know I have no idea what I’m doing.” 

Honestly, if it were anyone else she were doing this with, she probably _would_ have gotten miffed. 

She picks up the lighter. “Should I turn off the lights?”

“Yeah, totally. Go ahead.”

She pulls on the cord and turns it off, plunging the space in an unexpectedly deep darkness, broken when she sparks the lighter. While she walks back over to the table and lights the candles, she spots Orpheus watching her hands, and his expression is fond and reverential. 

The candlelight flickers strange and soft on his face. It’s warm in the dark and softens all the edges of the room. Of Orpheus, of her. Eurydice can’t help but wonder.

“What now?” she asks.

He blinks up at her, as if startled out of a daze. “Prayers,” he answers. “Only three of them tonight. I mean—only three that we _have_ to do, but we can do other festivity songs too, but I figure you don’t know the words and I don’t want to leave you out—“

She tweaks his ear (“Ow!”) before he can get too far in his own head. “I don’t mind.”

He smiles, crookedly, up at her. “… Okay. Should I do it right now?”

She nods. “Yeah. Go.”

Orpheus takes a breath. And then another, nervous. And sings.

Hebrew music is much different than regular Western music, she knows, but… _god._

It starts with a humming in the candlelight.

Then there are syllables to it that are foreign to her, sounding as if they were drawn from ancient places through his throat, buzzing and hovering and suspended in the many shadows. There’s a shock, there’s a stillness, as the melodies twist and zap, and the air is filled with diamonds and God, she _wishes_ she could sing like that. She doesn’t practice enough for it.

Hearing the Hebrew through his voice is really something _else_. She’d already thought of it as a beautiful language, but on his honeytongue tone, Eurydice might have believed in God. (Might have. It wouldn’t have been for long, anyway.)

The menorah-light is in his eyes as he sings into the cold and dark. It’s almost pathetic, how much she could wax poetic about him and his music (him and his everything). She’s not that kind of girl, to get so goddamn sappy over a boy every time he says something sweet. He’s not her boyfriend. He’s not even anything. He’s her neighbor and her friend, not even a roommate or… or _whatever._ It’s really not necessary.

Except it is.

She shakes the stars out of her eyes and says, “I didn’t know you were observant.”

He nods, hovering a hand over the candles. They must be cold. “Kind of. I don’t really follow the religion too closely, but I like tradition.”

Eurydice nods. She understands. It’s stability. “I never really celebrated holidays, not _really._ Never had a lot before now and no one to celebrate _with.”_

“But now you’re here.” He grabs the pastry box and opens it. “Jelly donut?”

“Hold on.” She fishes out her phone and beckons him to lean in. “I want to take a picture.”

He leans in. She snaps it. The photo is of the two of them in the dark, lit from behind by the menorah’s golden-home glow. The dark makes their faces sort of blurry, but that’s alright.

She pulls in a chair. “Okay, gimmie a donut.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a real charm in this 90-cent Hanukkah he’s got. Honestly, she far prefers this—the two of them sitting together on the couch in the dark, only the menorah on the table for light, the city quietly busy in the streets below as they munch on fried shit—to those big TV Christmases. 

They’d listened to the streets, heard the snow plow go by as Orpheus bemoaned what a pain in the ass it’d be to walk through the new snow banks it made on the sides of the street. Listened to the gentle rush of cars drive past, caught a police siren and made up stupid stories about the crime it could have been chasing.

“You know what I think? Probably a bank robber armed with nothin’ but a rubber chicken, a potato sack, and a pot of chili,” Eurydice says.

“The chili is for the police,” he replies. 

She snorts. “The whole twenty pounds of it—he throws it at the police. It’s in their eyes. It’s on the floor! They’re slipping! He’s getting away! It actually tastes pretty good!”

And Orpheus makes a 1920s mobster voice: “And if anyone asks who did it, tell ‘em it was Golden Joe and the Suggins Gang!”

Eurydice is too busy laughing as he continues in a normal inflection. “And then he gets into his clown car of other gang members and speeds off. It’s like the chase scene from _Baby Driver,_ but with a tiny clown gang car, and it’s circus music instead of rock.”

Eurydice sits up and smooths out her feathers. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Whaaat? Eurydice, you _gotta._ It’s so good. Wait, I’ll find it on my laptop.”

“Is it a movie?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a CD? I didn’t think you could afford streaming.”

“It’s Mr. Hermes’ account.” He fishes out his computer and pulls up Netflix, typing frantically into the search bar, and sets it in front of them when he finds it. “Here.”

 

* * *

 

She spends the evening there with him. When the candles burn out, Orpheus turns on his desk lamp, setting the dimmer low. He leaves all the other lights off.

The easiest thing about Orpheus is talking. That’s the thing—they can and do go on for hours just talking, they don’t need anything but each other to be able to hang out, and even the lapses of silence are comfortable. She’s never known someone like that before. Sure: she can make conversation. But after a while you start getting tired or start running out of things to talk about. The following silence is stiff and awkward, and you end up fishing for topics. Other times, folks are unapproachable outright.

Not Orpheus, though. If best friends are a thing, then she thinks this is it. 

“It’s getting late, Orpheus.”

“Mhm.”

“Shouldn’t I be getting home?”

“Oh. Sure.”

“We should get up.

“Mhm. But I’m lazy.”

“So am I.”

They sit there for another few minutes, just breathing, Eurydice sprawled across the couch and over Orpheus’ lap.

“I don’t wanna go back downstairs.”

She feels Orpheus’ hand stiffen. “Then don’t,” he says. “Stay with me.”

She hums at him like she’s considering it. “Sing me your best first.”

He shoots her a look, to which she responds by laughing and batting at his face. He’s got a funny pout. “Kidding.”

Another pause. “I _do_ have to go brush my teeth, though.”

“Oh, yeah.”

 

* * *

 

 _Eventually_ she gets up, but not without a significant amount of complaining, mostly from her. Orpheus is left in the dark when she leaves to go wash up for bed. The click of the door is oddly final, though he knows she’ll be back soon.

He looks at his hands and twiddles his fingers. He feels odd. He’s… well, he knows he should probably get ready for bed too, but there’s a hundred weird thoughts running in his head right now that demand his attention more than pyjamas do, and he’s not sure what to make of them or what to _do_ with them. When Eurydice was in the room, his compass pointed straight towards her. Now it’s… nothing. No magnetic pole to navigate by.

Christ.

He stands up. That’s step one. Eurydice really likes him, he thinks, as he heads to his bathroom, flicks on the lights. They’re really close friends by now. He wouldn’t give it up for the world. Orpheus turns the faucet and splashes water over his face, letting the day’s oil and dirt wash away. What does she think of him? Honestly, he’s not really sure--he knows that she likes his company a lot, that she was willing to spend a whole night with him, that she likes his music and thinks his fashion is weird, and… he knows a lot of things. But what does it _mean?_

He towels off his face and stares himself down in the mirror while he gnaws at his cheek. Who is he?

Orpheus. Music student. Plays a mean guitar. Eurydice—he likes her. Likes her a lot. Is it love? What’s he doing here? Easy question, he lives here. What’s he doing? Enjoying the night and brushing his teeth.

He brushes his teeth. Why is he so distracted? What was he thinking at the start of this? Eurydice? Was there a point he was getting to? He doesn’t know what she makes of him exactly, only that they’re good friends, and he doesn’t know what he makes of her. 

Focus. Get ready for bed and wait for Eurydice. Whatever other messes he has can wait until tomorrow; it’s one in the morning. 

He’s sitting on the couch in a pair of tacky flannel pants, scrolling through his phone when the door opens and Eurydice appears in a really soft-looking pair of button-down pyjamas covered in rubber duck print. “Move over,” she demands, though he’s already on the couch’s edge, and plops down into the spot beside him.

“I’ll sleep here tonight.”

She looks up and eyes him. “Don’t you have a queen size?”

“Yeah, but like…” He gestures vaguely.

“And don’t you have a bad back?”  
  
“ _Yeah,_ but—”  
  
“Listen, I won’t make you if it makes you uncomfortable, but I think you should just share the bed with me.”

She has a funny way of making suggestions into commands. Orpheus blinks. “... I mean. If you’re okay with it.”

“Why not?” Her hand is tapping at her knee. “We’ve been friends for, like, what—almost a year now?”  
  
“Since May, yeah.”  
  
“And since July we’ve stopped by each others’ places all the time. We’re adults; I think we can handle a sleepover.”  
  
“In the same bed, Eurydice.”  
  
“Suck it up. I’m not gonna let you get up in the morning with back pains.”

She’s insistent about this. He gnaws his cheek, a little apprehensive, because… man, he really _likes_ Eurydice and he’s afraid that things’ll get weird, even though she seems fine with it and he’s probably the one making it weird. He wants this too, but… blaghghgh he’s just _anxious._  “Okay, okay. We’ll both sleep on my bed.”

“Great.” She stands up, taking his hand and pulling on him. “Now get up, I’m fucking tired.”

He chuckles, getting to his feet. She leads him into his bedroom and, with a frankly unnecessary amount of fanfare, throws back his comforter and quite literally rolls into his bed, burying herself into his pillows. He follows her into the bed and throws the comforter back over them because it’s cold outside. Orpheus puts his kippah on his nightstand and burrows into the mattress, turning onto his back and pulling the blanket up to his nose.

Suddenly he feels a weight and a warmth sink into his side. Orpheus just about implodes when he realizes that Eurydice is Right There, right up against him, her head in the crook of his neck and very, very much getting comfortable there. 

Man. Fuck. He loves this.

He loves her.

 

* * *

 

He’s brought back out from dozing with a flash and the sound of a phone camera. Orpheus squints, disgruntled, and bats at Eurydice’s face area. “Put that away.”

“Memories,” she replies. He hears set her phone down on the floor. “You snore, by the way.”

“Go to sleep. I thought you were tired.”

“I’m going! I’m going.”

“Eurydice.”  
  
“I’m gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: in the original draft, Eurydice actually almost eats the candle and Orpheus has to stop her.
> 
> Double fun fact: every title in this fic is meant to be a memetic reference to early 2000/2010s music pop culture, and this is no exception, minus the "memetic" part. It's the title of one of my favorite songs to date: the ending music to a Half Life mod called Halfquake Sunrise that, if I recall correctly, appeared in 2010. It's very strangely nostalgic and very nice, and imo befitting of the mood of this chapter. I recommend giving it a listen.


	5. it's hard to say that i'd rather stay awake when i'm asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orpheus has a migraine.

It's a stormy day, in the warmer weather where it’s nice to stay inside and maybe open a window to watch the rain and let the petrichor waft in. The sky is green-grey and the streets are dark with water and shadows. Eurydice decides it's good weather to stay in with Orpheus.

She makes her way upstairs and doesn’t even knock, just opens his door with the spare key he’d given her, and his apartment is... dark. And still. And very quiet. Which is odd, because she _knows_ he’s home at this hour.

Well, unless he had some emergency thing to do? “Orpheus?” she calls into the empty space, but she doesn't get a response. No noise from movement either.

… Odd. She toes the door shut behind her and wanders in. It's strange for her to be alone in here when when the sky's like this--a sort of sparse light floats in from the windows, the whole room dark enough that her eyes have to adjust to the thin lighting. She turns on the lamp, its yellows driving away the storm's shadows to dust bunny corners.

Eurydice decides to tidy up while she's here. She doesn’t really move anything, just straightens things out and shelves what she knows has a shelf, or puts away a stray cup or two. Orpheus doesn’t really leave dishes out, so there's not much for her to do there.

She finds out he’s home, actually, forty minutes after she walked through the door. He’s buried under his bed; the curtains are drawn tightly shut. The only reason she realizes he’s there at all is the arm sticking out from under the blankets.

Ah. Another migraine.

Eurydice winces, thinking about the racket she'd made cleaning up, thinking no one was home. She approaches softly and brushes her fingers over his wrist, which twitches.

"Have you eaten?"

A weak thumbs up.

"Mhm." She doesn't say "okay;" she doesn't pronounce the hard "t" in eaten. Eurydice knows very little of migraines, having been spared their offenses, but she's trying to avoid the sharpness in consonants, just in case.

She retreats to the kitchen, finds and fishes out the naproxen, and comes back and gives it to him. He gently pulls down the blanket to take it and doesn't open his eyes.

"May I come in?" she asks, cringing a little at the hard C that slipped out, but Orph doesn't seem to mind; just nods and slips back under the blanket, soundless.

She takes off her jacket and carefully maneuvers her way in under the blanket too, wiggling in and settling in against him.

 

 

It's a nice day to be indoors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Fireflies" by Owl City.
> 
> Sorry this one's short. I threw down the draft a while back and couldn't figure out how to expand it, so this is just a small chapter.


	6. and every time we kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orpheus' POV of the first chapter, his and Eurydice's first meeting. Requested on Tumblr and posting it here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be moved into the place of chapter 2 when a new update arrives after this one, so everything can be neatly organized.

Orpheus is, quite frankly, falling apart.

He needs to nail this final project. Well–he’s done well enough throughout the year that even if he doesn’t get a high score, he’ll pass, and it’s not like job resumes look at your grade, they just look at where you graduated from and your degree; but Orpheus really  _cares_  about this,  _okay,_  and he loves his professor and he  _has_  to do this right or else everyone will be disappointed in him and he’ll just shrivel up and die.

And he’s  _well_  aware of the fact that that last part is just his anxiety acting up. But he feels it all the same, and knowing those things are fake doesn’t make the irrational feelings fake either.

So: he needs to get this right. The problem is that nothing he can come up with sounds right or  _feels_  right, and he knows what it  _should_  feel like–it needs to click–but it  _won’t._  He can’t quite get there somehow, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Besides that, he’s written and erased off the paper so damn much that he feels it starting to wear away, and what he’s actually written  down is getting lost in a fog of imprinted and smeared graphite. There’s a coffee stain in the corner. He’s going to  have to re-copy all of this onto clean paper to hand in, but that’s doable. That’s just busywork. That’s  _fine._  What’s  _not_  fine is how much trouble he’s having with this stupid  _project._  (”Stupid” is an exaggeration. He’s just frustrated.)

He thought working outside on the balcony would make him feel better, but that hope is quickly shattered when the wind blows through his papers. He clambers in a panic to keep them all from flying off, banging into his own stuff, and manages to catch most of them–all except for the one page he’d been laboring over for the past three hours, which goes soaring right over the edge.

His desperate lunge misses completely. Off it goes, riding the wind currents. He’s not seeing that thing again.

Maybe it shouldn’t as big of a deal as he’s making it out to be. Maybe he’s overreacting. But it’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back for him; Orpheus feels something in him snap, and all he thinks is  _oh, here it is,_  before he starts to break down.

He clutches the remaining papers to his chest and slumps in his chair, shoving the rest of the pages into a binder and feeling all of his stress bubble up and spill over as tears. He’s not one to cry with much noise–the fear of drawing attention to himself while so emotionally compromised means that he’s in the habit of holding his breath to stifle any and all sounds.

But he has to breathe eventually, so he does, and a sob slips out.

He expected for maybe one of his neighbors to hear. What he doesn’t expect is this: a call from below, asking,  _HEY! Hey! Is this yours?_  

He startles, then scrubs hurriedly at his eyes and drops the binder full of paper that he’d been clutching to his chest. He rushes to the railing to fast he almost goes careening over, but falling over may have been well worth the price of seeing the girl with his missing page in hand.

She’s beautiful, is the long and short of it. Her eyes are so dark, so deep and powerful; the warmth he finds in them is… strange, in a good way. Her smile, though strange, is enchanting. Her hair rests around her face in a perfect messy framing, and she’s just… Orpheus takes one look at her and thinks,  _I can trust her._

But good lord, does she have to be leaning so far over the railing? “Oh my god. Uh. Y–yeah, that’s mine, uh, holy–hold on, I’ll come downstairs, please don’t fall over oh my god.”

Orpheus turns from the railing and picks up the binder, throwing it onto his couch as he hurries through his apartment and rushes to the stairs, descending to the lower floor and–not running,  _speedwalking,_  because he’s already kind of winded–to the door of the apartment directly below his.

He knocks, and the door is opened so quickly he almost punches her in the head.

Oh.

…

Oh, dear. If she was pretty before, she’s gorgeous up close.

… They’re both staring.

“… I have your music,” she mumbles, and passes him the sheet.

“… Thanks.” He probably looks like shit. He was just having a whole Ordeal a moment ago, and even before that was weeks of 4 AM nights spent both procrastinating wildly and frantically trying to work, poring over his assignments through a haze of exhaustion that didn’t help him at all but that he couldn’t seem to get the opportunity to get rid of. Eurydice is clearly a worker as well, judging by the eye bags, but seems to be taking far better care of herself than Orpheus. And it by no means makes her ugly. Or less pretty. He prefers this, in fact; it’s human. She may look tired, and her features may look soft, but there’s a steel in her eyes that reflects back at him, and just looking at her makes him feel… safe. Strong, maybe. Confident.

These are the thoughts he’s distracted with when he absentmindedly reaches for the paper, still left staring when he misses and his hand brushes across hers. They both recoil like they’ve been burned, and Orpheus feels the embarrassment start to well up in him, but oddly enough he doesn’t feel the same stabbing shame he might feel with anybody else.

Eurydice seems to easily shoulder off the shock of it. “Here.” She holds the sheet up higher, and he takes it this time.

Orpheus swallows. He takes a chance.

“Thanks,” he repeats. “Um, I gotta go study, but do you wanna talk again?”

And he watches her eyes light up, and she says, “Yes.”

The embarrassment is not erased, but it  _is_  drowned completely in the exhilaration he feels with that answer. She hadn’t seen him for more than a few minutes, and he invited her for another chat some time and she said  _yes,_  and she doesn’t look awkward about it, she looks  _more than happy_  in fact–and maybe he’s just reading her wrong, but a part of him stronger than his doubt is telling him that he’s doing it right.

Orpheus says, “Okay. Maybe not on the balcony. It’s kind of scary when you lean out like that.”

“I’m not sure we can do anything about that. I only ever run across you when we’re both on the balcony, ‘cause we never get to run into each other when we’re leaving or coming back into the building.”

“But can you lean back? For me?”

“Pfft. Fine.”

Orpheus isn’t sure if she’ll keep that promise, but that’s good enough for him. “Okay. Thank you so much for getting this for me,” he says with delight.

She shrugs. “It’s nothin’. Blew into my face anyway. Hey–I didn’t catch your name?”

Oh! “Orpheus.”

“Eurydice. Go do your homework, Orpheus. See you around.”

“Okay, Eurydice, you too.”

He turns away to the elevators and can barely contain himself for the glee he’s got; as soon as the doors closed and he can be confident in his privacy, he waves his hands a little and bounces on his heels and hugs himself tight and does a little spin.

 _Eurydice._ What a name. Oh, god.

Oh, god.


End file.
